DyC: An expressive annotation-directed dynamic compiler for C

DOI10.1016/S0304-3975(00)00051-7MaRDI QIDQ1583356zbMATH OpenWikidataFDO

Authors B. Grant, Craig Chambers, Susan J. Eggers, Brian Grant, Markus Mock, Matthai Philipose

Publication date 26 October 2000

Published in Theoretical Computer Science (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3975(00)00051-7

zbMATH Keywords

C languageconstant foldingdataflow analysisDynamic compilationpartial evaluationprogram optimizationrun-time code generationspecialization

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Theory of compilers and interpreters (68N20)

Review text

We present the design of DyC, a dynamic-compilation system for C based on run-time specialization. Directed by a few declarative user annotations that specify the variables and code on which dynamic compilation should take place, a binding-time analysis computes the set of run-time constants at each program point in the annotated procedure's control-flow graph; the analysis supports program-point-specific polyvariant division and specialization. The results of the analysis guide the construction of a run-time specializer for each dynamically compiled region; the specializer supports various caching strategies for managing dynamically generated code and mixes of speculative and demand-driven specialization of dynamic branch successors. Most of the key cost/benefit trade-offs in the binding-time analysis and the run-time specializer are open to user control through declarative policy annotations. DyC has been implemented in the context of an optimizing compiler, and initial results have been promising. The speedups we have obtained are good, and the dynamic-compilation overhead is among the lowest of any dynamic-compilation system, typically 20-200 cycles per instruction generated on a Digital Alpha 21164. The majority of DyC's functionality has been used to dynamically compile an instruction-set simulator. Only three annotations were required, but a few other changes to the program had to be made due to DyC's lack of support for static global variables. This deficiency and DyC's rudimentary support for partially static data structures are the primary obstacles to making DyC easy to use.

Recommendations

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• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2080281

Cites work

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Cited in

(10)

• Accurate program analyses for successful specialization of legacy system software
• MetaML and multi-stage programming with explicit annotations
• Towards a compilation paradigm for computational applications on the information power grid
• DyC
• Implicitly heterogeneous multi-stage programming
• Dynamic binary translation using run-time feedbacks
• Reducing the overhead of dynamic compilation
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2017359 (Why is no real title available?)
• A portable approach to dynamic optimization in run-time specialization
• \textsc{Mnemonics}: type-safe bytecode generation at run time

Describes a project that uses

Uses Software

• Smalltalk

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